Hiding in Plain Sight
by The First Architect
Summary: Nothing lasts forever. Not even a good cover story.
1. Chapter 1

**A\N:** I am toying with some _NCIS: Los Angeles_ ideas. Don't know how they will roll out in the end, but this is the beginning of one. Don't know how long this will be, or where I am going, so we shall see.

**Disclaimer: I do not own _NCIS: Los Angeles_.**

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_Hiding in Plain Sight_

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**Chapter 1**

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"_3 months and the neighbors still don't know we're here." There is a bit of amusement in Sam's voice._

"_Huh, hiding in plain sight." Callen replies, scanning the large sandstone building to memory."What was it before we got it?"_

"_Old water plan administration building. Condemned after the Northridge quake."_

_Callen pauses. "Condemned?"_

"_Only on the outside, G."_

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Kensi is in the bullpen when it happens.

Nate's trying to get in her head, but she's sidestepping him with smiles and one word answers.

The psychologist studies her with arms crossed, brow furrowed. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," she answers, sighing.

He lulls into a momentary silence before breaking it. "Well, your body language and one word answer suggest that you're not lying. You don't want to talk about it."

Resisting the urge to tell him she just said that, she leans back against the wood of her desk and regards him coolly. "I'm glad to see your putting that master's degree of yours to good use."

He smiles and squints at her, studying again. "Sarcasm," he muses, "Interesting."

Her back straightens at his tone and she frowns. "Nate," she stands, suddenly not amused, "Stay out of my head."

She catches movement out of the corner of her eye as the front door to the building is opened ever so slightly. She looks over, confused. Callen and Sam had just left to get Chinese for the team; they couldn't have been back with the food already. An explanation is given in the next three seconds. Three seconds of warning before all hell breaks loose.

In the first beat of her heart, she catches the barrel of a Colt AR-15s appear from behind the open door. Her mind races: Assault Weapons—US Military—Preferred gun of drug cartels.

In the next second, the masked face of a man with dark, black eyes. Emotionless—Focused—Killer.

And in the third and final second, the same man's body, twice her size clad in full tactical gear, hands attached to the raised assault weapon. Five others flank him, guns also raised. Military movement—Team based—She's outnumbered.

Her instincts kick in.

"GET DOWN!" she lunges towards Nate, tackling him to the ground as gunfire splits the air.

Everything happens at once.

The lower floor of the headquarters is in an uproar with shouts and screams erupt as the gunfire continues. Kensi falls under her desk, covers her head with her hands and pulls her knees to her chest. She can feel splintering wood raining down on her.

Nate is cursing on the ground beside her, clutching his shoulder. Red blood in slipping through his fingers. She watches with wide eyes as the masked team enters, guns still firing. They move swiftly. The last man in the line breaks off and stays on the first floor while the remaining five make their way towards the stairs.

Kensi's hand goes to her side, but there's nothing but air. She doesn't have her gun. It's in her locker.

"_Stay on the ground!_" The man shouts, his voice heavily accented. English is not his first language. Kensi guesses maybe Portuguese, or some variant of the dialect by the way he rolls his R's. "_Stay on the ground and no one else needs to die!_"

How reassuring.

She quickly goes over the statistics in her head. Hetty had been, most likely, at her desk when the shooting started. She was blocked by a concrete support beam and her wooden divider. Safe, Kensi concluded. Others were not as lucky. There had to have been at least ten people on the lower floor. Tech support was unprotected, as well as wardrobe. Hopefully her warning had been enough, but from the light smell of copper teasing her nose, she knew at least one person was hit. That left her with the upstairs—

"_What the hell?—Whoa, Whoa. Okay, Okay—just point that thing somewhere else, would ya?_" She freezes. She knows the voice all too well. Eric was never one who liked guns pointed at him.

"_Get your hands off me!—Whoa. Easy there, dude. Easy._"

Something inside her snaps. They were taking Eric. But why? She figures in that moment that the "whys" don't matter. It was not going to happen.

"What do we do?" Nate pants beside her. She assesses his injuries quickly. A simple graze, he'd be fine, if not a little sore once he was patched up.

"_You_ aren't going to do anything," she hisses, moving her hands to the bottom of her shirt. Slowly, she lifts up the fabric and withdraws a knife from the holster on her back. This _was not_ going to be another Dom. Not if she had anything to do with it.

She feels Nate stiffen beside her, sees the cogs and wheels in his head turning. "Kensi," he whispers frantically, "You can't be serious. Look, I know what you're thinking, but there are five of them and only one of you_. Six, Kensi. Six._"

"Stay here."

"Just because of what happened to Dom—"

She turns sharply towards him. "Don't," she says. And then softer, "Stay down, Nate. I can't do this if I'm worried about you. Get people out once I clear the area."

The masked man near them squeezes off a couple of rounds towards the back of the room, yelling at people to stay down. She can feel her heartbeat in her head and through the adrenalin; she can hear conversations in Portuguese from the upstairs computer room. But she cannot make out the words over her own heartbeat.

Crawling on the ground, she glances out towards the intruder. His head is constantly on the swivel and she realizes that he'll shoot her before she gets even remotely close to him.

Then Kensi catches Hetty at the far end of the room, the woman's small hands clenched securely around a miniature handgun. Their eyes meet and Hetty nods ever so slightly. Then the older woman is on her feet, firing at the man. He is hit in the shoulder and chest but acts like they are bee stings. He raises his weapon with a snarl and Kensi is already moving forward. Through her tunnel vision, she catches Hetty go down in a heap, and her heart beats painfully for her Operations Manager.

For the briefest of moments, Kensi realizes that she has never killed someone with her bare hands before. And one could argue that killing with a knife is not killing with your bare hands. But she would disagree because when she places her left hand over his mouth so he cannot scream and thrusts the blade in her right through his back, it's the closest she's ever been. It is not killing with bare hands, but it is enough to shake her. She feels him jerk, but knows that she's penetrated his liver. He'll bleed out internally in less than three minutes.

In her eyes, she was protecting everyone. She was strong enough, tough enough to make sure they stayed safe during this mess. She was not going to let anyone else get hurt. And if that means that she has to watch the light dime from a human beings eyes as she kills him, then so be it.

These men were trying to hurt her family, and that was something worth killing for.

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**A\N:** I like Kensi. She's my favorite character. But I also like the angsty drama between the team when something hectic goes down. So this is the hectic situation. Because let's be serious, their base of operations was going to be found out sooner or later, in my opinion. Just my thought though. Anyways, read and review if you'd like. No pressure though. Until next chapter, stay cool.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own _NCIS: Los Angeles_.**

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_Hiding in Plain Sight_

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**Chapter 2  
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_For the briefest of moments, Kensi realizes that she has never killed someone with her bare hands before. And one could argue that killing with a knife is not killing with your bare hands. But she would disagree because when she places her left hand over his mouth so he cannot scream and thrusts the blade in her right through his back, it's the closest she's ever been. It is not killing with bare hands, but it is enough to shake her. She feels him jerk, but knows that she's penetrated his liver. He'll bleed out internally in less than three minutes._

_In her eyes, she was protecting everyone. She was strong enough, tough enough to make sure they stayed safe during this mess. She was not going to let anyone else get hurt. And if that means that she has to watch the light dime from a human beings eyes as she kills him, then so be it._

_These men were trying to hurt her family, and that was something worth killing for._

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She lowers the man to the ground when he goes slack in her arms and grabs for his gun. Nate hisses at her to come back but she is already making her way up towards the stairs in a run that Sam taught her. A heel to toe run, the Ex-SEAL always said, was the quickest and quietest way to approach and enemy. It distributes weight evenly across the sole instead of putting all the pressure on the toes or the heel. You hardly make a sound.

She takes the stairs carefully. The five men are positioned around Eric, yelling at him in Portuguese. She can tell the young computer tech doesn't understand because he is shaking his head vigorously.

"_I don't know what you want me to do!"_

The biggest of the men points to one computer screen, which is currently running a bank account spreadsheet with a _large_ amount of money and then to another page completely in Portuguese. It's a foreign bank account, she realizes. They want money. That's all bad guys ever want.

Eric shakes his head. "I can't transfer the funds! I don't have the access codes to do that!"

There is a curse in Portuguese, something about an incompetent fool and one of the masked men grabs the blond man by the back of the neck. Kensi raises her gun to the closest intruder and fires.

Glass shatters and voices roar.

Her gun clicks empty seconds later and there is a beat of silence. She is met with wide eyes from the four remaining men in masks and Eric looks like he could cry at the sight of her. Moments later guns are raised and she is diving behind the center island in the room, glass shattering around her.

"_Get off me!"_ Eric yells, and she can hear him thrashing for his life.

Glass crunches to her right and she turns, facing the barrel of gun. She grabs it and pulls forward, slamming her knee into the hostels unprotected gut. She hears the _whoosh_ of air leave his lungs and lets him drop to the floor.

Turning, she sweeps the next mans legs out from under him and follows through with a heel to his chest. Then a sharp kick to his face. He is down in thirty seconds, groaning and clutching his broken nose. Eric is being held in his seat by one of the men, while the other regards her for a split second before charging. She withdraws her knife and swipes at him. She misses and in seconds his hands are around her neck, squeezing.

She doesn't think, only presses the blade of her knife against the inside of his upper arm and pushes away. The slash is deep; she's severed his brachial artery. Stunned, he collapses backwards.

Her moment of victory is taken from her when thick arms snake under her arms from behind, hands fastening together at the back of her neck. Then the man whose nose she had broken earlier is in front of her, stepping over his fallen comrade and slamming a sledgehammer of a fist into her stomach. Her body wants to double over, but she is held standing and another fist crashes into the side of her face. She tastes blood and can feel the sticky liquid running down the side of her face.

Her world is sent spinning, but as the man in front of her pulls back again, she throws her weight backwards, uses the man behind her for leverage, and kicks the hostile in front of her in the chest. He is sent backwards, falling with no control.

The man behind her spits curses at her and she is still immobilized by his arms. She locks eyes with Eric for the briefest of seconds, and it kills her to see how truly scared he is. He wants to help, but there isn't much he can do for her with a gun pointed at him. And she is fine with that. She doesn't want him to put his life in unnecessary danger for her. He was not the agent. She was.

With strength she's never seen before, the man behind her pivots and throws her. She is sent through one of the full length glass windows, sharp shards slicing and slashing. She hears Eric scream her name and things seem to freeze for the briefest of moments. Just long enough for her to feel the metal railing at her back and the sudden weightlessness that comes with falling as she pitches backwards over it.

Almost seconds later, she lands hard on the unforgiving wood of a desk, the impact setting her nerves on fire and sending a white flash of pain across her vision. She is left gasping for air like a beached fish, back arching. Her right shoulder is dislocated, but when she rolls off the desk and slams to the ground, it crunches back in, though not correctly. She can't feel her fingers.

Her stomach is numb and it is then that she realizes why. A shard of glass has penetrated her abdomen, and through the pain she can see just how badly her hands are shaking. Blood runs into her right eye and she squints, blinded.

"_You bastards!_" Eric is yelling again, and his voice is getting closer. Kensi's puzzled by this because she doesn't think she is moving. Numbly, she realizes that the remaining three men are making their way down the stairs with the thrashing computer technician, who is trying with everything in his power to break away.

She withdrawals her phone with trembling fingers, types in the four digit passcode for her 'agent in distress' and leaves it on the floor.

No matter what happens next, she has to buy time until Sam and Callen get back.

She's lying on her side as the three man team that used to be six passes her. She reaches out and trips the last one. He falls to the ground and she staggers to her feet, breaking off the excess glass that is sticking out of her stomach. She will not completely remove the shard, that would most certainly lead to her bleeding out. Right now the glass is the only thing keeping the blood inside her body.

She catches Nate out of the corner of her eye. The psychologist is pressing a towel to Hetty's bleeding arm. People are still crouched or lying on the ground and Kensi realizes that what had seemed like hours upstairs to her, had only, truly, been minutes in the real world.

The man who faces her is the first who had entered the building; she could recognize his eyes anywhere. His two teammates call for him, but there is a wildness in his eyes and he mumbles something back to them.

"_Make it quick, Salvano."_ The man holding Eric snaps in Portuguese. The other figure lifts his gun and fires a few rounds into the ceiling, yelling orders. Screams and whimpers follow. Kensi understands the message. No one interferes, or they'll be shot.

The man called Salvano seems to regard her curiously and Kensi watches as he smiles. He is built and muscular, but when he starts bobbing left to right, almost like he is dancing to some inaudible soundtrack, she is shown just how agile he is. Dragging in a painful breath, she understands completely what he is doing.

To a normal person, his movements may seem like some sad attempt at dance, but she recognizes it as the _ginga,_ the fundamental movement in the Afro-Brazilian martial art form of Capoeira. His steps are not as free flowing, so she guesses he has studied the Regional form of the style as oppose to the Angola and Abada forms.

"_Why are you doing this? Who do you work for?_"She asks in Portuguese. His head shifts back slightly, eyes wide. He hadn't expected her to know his language.

"_You speak Portuguese._" It is not a question, but a cautious statement and she can see that it has surprised him. His eyes grow wide ever so slightly with the realization that she's probably understood everything they have been saying. Including his name. He snaps something in Portuguese and is suddenly moving forward. Kensi holds her ground, hands raised in front of her face, but before she can throw any kind of defense, he is dropping back away from her.

A taunt, she realizes. He is not taking her seriously and she does not blame him. She can hardly breathe and her right arm and shoulder have started to throb in a pulsing rhythm. She can no longer feel the glass in her stomach. Whether that is good or bad, she doesn't care. She needs to stay focused.

Salvano comes towards her again and she bucks forward as well. He jumps back, startled at her attack, but then snarls when he realizes she is just copying him. He kicks at her straight on with the sole of his foot, aiming at her chest. She blocks it with both of her hands and jumps forward, thrusting her right knee towards him. He blocks with palms and sends a high spinning kick. She ducks and retaliates with a left kick of her own.

His stance is wide and he simply rocks back on his right leg before shooting forward. She retreats quickly, but he follows her with a long roll. He's sacrificed his footing for an acrobatic pursue, and before he can fully stand she knees him in the face. Her ability to land a blow on him is only because she understands his fighting style.

The simple movement of the _ginga_ conceals many of a Capoeiristas' intentions and is a platform for landing devastating kicks and attacks. The shift from attack to defense is seamless, but not unstoppable. She was able to hit him only because she _knew_ he would pursue her in the quickest way possible. When he rolled towards her, she had been ready. In her state she isn't strong enough to kill him, but she can damn well make him bleed.

He falls back to the ground, blood rushing from his nose and she lifts a foot, stomping it towards his chest. He rolls to his feet and she sweeps her leg across the floor, trying to catch him by surprise. He simply back-flips over her leg, lands on his toes and then flips forward again.

She silently admires his fluidity, knowing full well that she cannot match him for style in her current condition. Though she knows the form he is employing, the repertoire she is limited to now cannot protect her for long. The only hope she has it to stay on her feet and try to read his movements. Throw punches only when she is positive they'll land.

She watches as Salvano switches from the _ginga_ to the _balança_, a series of side to side feints with the torso that is meant to deceive her. The movement throws off her timing and she cannot track his centerline.

He tries to sweep her legs out from under her but she backpedals out of his reach. He continues his movement, pivoting on his left foot and thrusts his right backwards up towards her head in a move that literally translates to 'stingray's tail' in Portuguese. She is taken by surprise at his flexibility and his foots collides with the side of her face.

She staggers backwards but regains her bearings quickly. Turning, she is met with his smiling face. He is inches from her and she throws a punch that collides with his stomach. He grunts, but it feels like punching a sofa cushion. The tactical suite he's wearing coupled with his muscles act as a shock absorber, and her attempt at a blow is nothing more than an annoying itch to him.

His huge, crude hands are suddenly on her shoulders and he slams his forehead into hers. She stumbles backwards, dazed, and before she can put up a block, he spins a kick into her stomach. She recognizes it as a _Rabo de Arraia_, the fundamental kick of a Capoeira fighter. Not that the information does her any good.

The heel of his right foot slams into her abdomen, forcing the glass that she had not pulled out deeper into her stomach. The gasp of air she draws in suddenly cannot reach her lungs. Swaying forward, she reaches out and grabs onto his arm in an attempt to steady herself. His chest shakes with laughter.

"_You are finished,"_ he chuckles.

She's panting, but shakes her head. "_No,_" she whispers. "_You won't take him._"

He frowns, pushing her hand away. "_You cannot stop us._"

She drops to her knees without his support. Glancing up at him, she hugs her stomach with her left arm. "I won't let you take him," she says in English, looking to the two men who are holding Eric. They smile at her, and when Eric tries to break free, laugh.

"I swear to god," Eric spits in fury, "If you do anything else, I'll—"

"You'll do what?" Salvano glances briefly over his shoulder to the young computer wizard and smiles.

Kensi can suddenly feel the heel of his boot on her shoulder, pushing her backwards. The force is not hard, an effort that reminds her of warding away an annoying animal. She slumps backwards to the floor, unable to keep herself upright.

His boot is on her stomach next, applying an uncomfortable amount of force. She can feel the glass in her side shift and lets out a whimper through her clenched teeth.

"Stop!" Eric shouts.

The mercenary isn't listening. Slowly, he leans forward, resting his forearm on his knee as he looks down at her. Her hands are gripped tightly around his ankle but he's too heavy for her to move. She can taste blood in her mouth but grits her teeth against the pain.

Salvano stares down at her curiously. _"This is all you are?"_ he inquires in Portuguese. _"I've heard that the Office of Special Projects was a force to be reckoned with, but you were nothing. You are nothing but a woman."_

Kensi fights the urge to tell him that when he had entered her building, there had been six of them, and now there are only three. Instead, she stares back into his cold, black eyes and smiles a grimace. "_You're wrong_," she says, panting. "_I'm not nothing. I'm just stalling._"

Salvano blinks at her blankly and then looks sideways. His eyes lock onto her phone, and though she guesses he cannot read the screen, she knows he gets it. In an instant his foot is gone and he's roaring at his men in Portuguese to get their asses moving.

Kensi wants to follow them, she _needs_ to follow them, but she can't feel anything anymore. Blood is running through her fingers from her stomach and she can hardly move her right arm. She's left staring at the ceiling as voices slide in and out of focus, wondering if she'll ever see Eric again.


End file.
